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HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE

absolutely requisite. This consideration alone would,in a great degree, account for the little progress madeby the ancients in such enquiries.

But, besides the mere power of making experiments,there must exist a correct appreciation of their use, anda capacity to reason correctly from them. Now, in thispoint of view, instances are certainly not wanting amongthe ancients, of philosophers who have evinced the mostcorrect apprehension of the nature and value of in-ductive reasoning; and, where they did confine them-selves to arguing from the facts, their conclusions wereusually just. They did not, perhaps, advance to anyhigh generalisations, but their inductions, as far as theywent, were sound and legitimate. Unfortunately, how-ever, this was by no means the common case. If thelimited extent of experimental enquiry had been the onlycause affecting the progress of the ancient physics, andtheir philosophers had all made full use even of thosemeans which they did possess, we should have had avery different picture presented to us of the state ofnatural science. We shall find the most powerfullyefficacious cause of the deficiency, in the prevailing mix-conception of the entire nature and scope of physicalenquiry.

The almost universal error seems to have been, thatof recognising hardly any connection between observedresults and philosophical theory. The boundaries be-tween truth and fiction, between fact and hypothesis,seem to have been habitually transgressed without cen-sure or hesitation ; or, rather, such distinctions seemnever to have been clearly marked or understood. Thefacts were not studied with a view to the formation ofthe theories; nor were the hypotheses constructed withthe object of representing the facts. The 'idea of phi-losophical theory was imagined to involve somethingquite remote from all connection with matter; it wasrather some law emanating from an elevated intellectualprinciple, to which it was imagined all the affections